Tis the Season

Christmas morning came, and we opened our gifts at home with Lily before heading over to David's brother John's house. David got me a beautiful diamond necklace (and some other things, which I forgot) But he did nearly give me heart attack when I opened the jewelry box and saw... nothing. I thought he had accidentally lost it, and I wasn't sure what to say - until he stared laughing. Apparently he had taken it out and hung it on the tree. I got him a receiver, which sounds lame, but he was happy. Little did I know that receiver would morph into a whole entertainment sound system! But I enjoy it immensely as well, so it was a great investment. Lily was quite ecstatic with her own gifts, chew toys and a gormuet cookie that mom sent - that lasted all of 15 seconds.

After that, we took off to John and Amber's to be with his family for the rest of the day. Thanks Amber for the great spread! I think the best part was walking by the little stream thing they have going through their neighborhood singing Christmas carols to the unfortunate masses. We got cheered once, and no one threw anything - I had a good time at least.

Deck the Halls

Christmas! I love Christmas – I’m one of those people that really get into it. I used to love coming home from school in December – when we left, it would be regular boring house. When we got home, it would be CHRSITMAS! It was great. The best part were the bowls with the Christmas M&Ms in them. Thus, David was a little confused when I would make us randomly stop at stores to look for those red and green M&Ms – for some reason I never found them, but not for lack of trying. David isn’t really big on Christmas, so he really did a good job of humoring me as I went crazy decorating the house, buying oldies Christmas music (Gotta have my Dean Martin!), looking for M&Ms, and contemplating carving my own shepards when I couldn’t find any to match my re-vamped nativity scene. He quietly endured it all, with the occasional “What did you get a Hobby Lobby for $85?!” thrown in.

Prior to our marriage we had the live vs. fake tree discussion. I told him it was a make or break thing for me – so this year David had his first real Christmas tree. We got in the car and headed up north to a Christmas tree farm to pick it out. After sipping our hot cocoa (cider for David) we jumped on the tractor and they took us out to the field to pick our tree. Naturally, our 5 year-old selves kicked in, and we jumped off the tractor to get to the good trees before all those other families got their first. Luckily, most of them had small children to slow them down. So, dashing through the trees, we eventually picked one out, which David proceeded to cut down and CARRY, because he didn’t want to mess up the branches. How cute. We took it home on my little Corolla (“Tiffany, it’s going to fall off!”) and put it up in our living room. It was so pretty – thanks to mom’s gift of a bunch of cool ornaments, we had the best tree in the building.

Today I'm 24

It’s my birthday, so I get to brag on my husband. As luck would have it, David was out in West Texas measuring oil drums on the day of my birthday, which was a Wednesday this year. He got special permission to fly back Wednesday night, and then fly back the next morning. He said he wasn’t going to miss my first birthday as my husband. Isn’t he sweet? So, naturally, it was the coldest day of winter, and was actually kinda snowing the day he was supposed to fly in. He came anyway, and we drove very slowly to dinner at this great restaurant, whose name escapes me at the moment. After that we went home and decorated the Christmas tree and listened to carols by the fire. We had my real Birthday Day of Fun that Saturday – he took me to the zoo (yay!), dinner, and a movie, which was a real sacrifice for David, since he had so much work and studying to catch up on. Is it weird that I still really like going to the zoo? It was like us and a bunch of 8 year olds, basically. At least I could see over all their heads. But I don’t care – we had fun trying to get this cougar to attack us. But apparently he wanted to guy with the small child behind us instead. Still entertaining.
David got to commune with a gorilla, as you can see above, which is one of the few shots I got before my camera pooped out. I had a great day – he even let me go to a girlie movie. So I was very well taken care of on my b-day – thanks for all the calls, everyone!